Engineering Life: Advances, Challenges and Opportunities of Growing/Remodeling Living Systems

A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Synthetic Biology and Systems Biology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 June 2022) | Viewed by 16982

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Environmental Cell Biology Group, Department of Microgravity and Translational Regenerative Medicine, Otto von Guericke University, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany
Interests: cell biology; cancer biology; environmental influences; microgravity; cellular communication; photodynamic therapy; cancer treatment; antimicrobial resistance; tumor microbiome
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Core Facility Tissue Engineering, Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg, 39106 Magdeburg, Germany
Interests: tissue engineering; bioreactor technology; nondestructive methods for tissue characterization; 3 dimensional tumor models; infection biology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Life is distinct not only because of its evolutionary history and manifold function, but because its unique complex structure and organizational behavior. The ability to grow and remodel in response to diverse stimuli is one of the most remarkable differences of living matter compared to ‘classical’ engineering materials. These phenomena play important roles, e.g. during morphogenesis in early life as well as in homeostasis and pathogenesis in adult tissues, which often adapt to changes in their chemo-mechanical environment as a result of ageing, diseases, injury or surgical intervention. However, such mechano-regulated growth and remodeling processes are not only observed in humans but also in lower organisms or plants. With today's technologies (3D cell culture, bioprinting, vascular engineering, advanced bioreactors, smart biomaterials, stem-cell differentiation, and microfluidics-based physiological platforms), it is possible to control cells and their environments more precisely. This way we are able to engineer and manipulate living tissues and complex organ(oid)s for potential clinical use. In addition, synthetic life experiments attempt to probe the origins of life, study its principal properties, or – more ambitiously – to recreate life from abiotic components.

This Special Issue will contain a selection of papers highlighting recent advances in tissue engineering and synthetic biology. We welcome the submission of original article and review manuscripts focusing on the growth and remodeling of living systems. Understanding of how they grow, develop, adapt, and evolve is still one of the most important challenges in biosciences.

Dr. Marcus Krüger
Prof. Dr. Heike Walles
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • tissue engineering
  • organoids
  • in vitro-models
  • biophantoms
  • biological modules
  • biological machines
  • biosensors
  • synthetic life

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

22 pages, 2026 KiB  
Review
Hydrogel Preparation Methods and Biomaterials for Wound Dressing
by Jingjing Su, Jiankang Li, Jiaheng Liang, Kun Zhang and Jingan Li
Life 2021, 11(10), 1016; https://doi.org/10.3390/life11101016 - 27 Sep 2021
Cited by 163 | Viewed by 15950
Abstract
Wounds have become one of the causes of death worldwide. The metabolic disorder of the wound microenvironment can lead to a series of serious symptoms, especially chronic wounds that bring great pain to patients, and there is currently no effective and widely used [...] Read more.
Wounds have become one of the causes of death worldwide. The metabolic disorder of the wound microenvironment can lead to a series of serious symptoms, especially chronic wounds that bring great pain to patients, and there is currently no effective and widely used wound dressing. Therefore, it is important to develop new multifunctional wound dressings. Hydrogel is an ideal dressing candidate because of its 3D structure, good permeability, excellent biocompatibility, and ability to provide a moist environment for wound repair, which overcomes the shortcomings of traditional dressings. This article first briefly introduces the skin wound healing process, then the preparation methods of hydrogel dressings and the characteristics of hydrogel wound dressings made of natural biomaterials and synthetic materials are introduced. Finally, the development prospects and challenges of hydrogel wound dressings are discussed. Full article
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